In life, as in other arts, what is spontaneous, and perhaps even what is unregenerate, have often more of charm than what is acquired or learnt by discipline. And in the case of Miss Nightingale, her elemental vigour of mind and force of will, will perhaps to some readers seem more admirable than the philosophy which she applied to her conduct or the acquired graces with which she sought to chasten her character. But however this may be, her constant striving after something which she deemed better, and the unceasing conflict which she waged, now with opposition of outward circumstance and now with undisciplined impulses from within, add savour and poignancy to her life.
No man knew her so well for so many years as Mr. Jowett, and the thought of her life never ceased to excite his admiration. “Most persons are engaged,” he wrote at Christmas-time 1886, “in feasting and holiday-making amid their friends and relatives. You are alone in your room devising plans for the good of the natives of India or of the English soldiers as you have been for the last thirty years, and always deploring your failures as you have been doing for the last thirty years, though you have had a far greater and more real success in life than any other lady of your time.” And again: “There are those who respect and love you, not for the halo of glory which surrounded your name in the Crimea, but for the patient toil which you have endured since on behalf of every one who is suffering or wretched.” To us who are able to enter even more fully than Mr. Jowett into the inner life of Miss Nightingale, the respect and admiration may well be yet more enhanced, as we picture the conditions in which the patient toil was done, and remember the struggles of a beautifully sensitive soul in ascending the path towards perfection.
Such is the picture of Miss Nightingale which this Book has endeavoured to draw. As I wrote it I often thought with Mr. Jowett, that the life of the secluded worker in the solitary bedroom in South Street was more impressive even than the better known episodes of Santa Filomena in the fever-haunted wards of Scutari, or of the Lady-in-Chief giving her orders as she trudged through the snow from hut to hut on the heights of Balaclava. But it is Miss Nightingale herself who, unconsciously, has said the last words on her Life and Character. In praising one of her fellow-workers, and, next, in giving counsel to some fellow-seekers after good, she used phrases which may well be applied to herself:—
“One whose life makes a great difference for all: all are better off than if he had not lived; and this betterness is for always, it does not die with him—that is the true estimate of a great Life.”
“Live your life while you have it. Life is a splendid gift. There is nothing small in it. For the greatest things grow by God's law out of the smallest. But to live your life, you must discipline it. You must not fritter it away in ‘fair purpose, erring act, inconstant will’; but must make your thought, your words, your acts all work to the same end, and that end not self but God. This is what we call Character.”
Footnotes:
[255] Suggestions for Thought, vol. ii. p. 205.
[256] The Mythe of Life: Four Sermons on the Social Mission of the Church. By C. W. Stubbs, 1880, pp. 86, 98. Mr. Stubbs (afterwards Bishop of Truro) quoted these passages from a letter written by Miss Nightingale to her sister.
[257] Letter to Sir Bartle Frere, June 27, 1868.